


The Adventures of Doctor Doolittle

by togina



Series: Howling Commandos [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Canon character deaths, Gen, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5159534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/togina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Have you heard of Chee-Chee?  He saved Dr. Doolittle, you know.  (By the time Phillips tells him the war is won, Jim knows more than he ever planned about French monkey business, and far too much about what it means to be saved.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventures of Doctor Doolittle

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr, [here](http://toli-a.tumblr.com/post/130850421893/im-just-gonna-send-you-a-lot-of-prompts-and-you). Several innocent animals were harmed in the Second World War, and Bucky didn't help.

The first time it happened, Barnes shrieked and fell out of a tree.  Morita, who had been spotting for their sniper, quickly swung down after him, landing in a crouch beside Cap, who was snorting with laughter and clutching his ribs.

“Damnit, Steve,” Sarge grumbled, kicking Cap gently in the leg.  “I’m telling you, it was huge!  And staring right at me, like some kind of squirrel Nazi spy!  What if they’re experimenting on animals?”

Tears started leaking from Captain America’s eyes, and Jones had bitten down hard on his bottom lip to hide his smile as he checked Sarge for injuries.  

“Right,” Rogers gasped out, wiping at his face and avoiding his best friend’s glare.  He glanced up at Jim.  “Fresno, you should take Dum Dum and make sure that tree is –” Cap lost the battle with his laughter, and paused to start chuckling again.  “Erm, clear of enemy squirrels.”

“Steve, you ass!” Barnes shouted, launching himself at the world’s ideal soldier and putting him in a headlock.  Jim raised his eyebrows, and Dugan followed him back up into the tree, where they could howl with laughter out of their sergeant’s reach.  “See if I shoot you anything for dinner!” Barnes hollered up after them, and even Gabe couldn’t help but snort.

“I don’t know about dinner, Sarge,” Jones said quietly, sounding solemn.  “I mean, what if you hit Bambi?”

This time Dum Dum fell out of the tree, still chortling, and Jim looked down to see Barnes sitting on Rogers’s chest—proof that the ideal soldier didn’t stand a chance against someone who’d been tickling him for years.

* * *

They were too deep in Nazi territory for Stark to come get them, headed over the Rhine and into the Black Forest and another well-hidden Hydra plant.  By the second week the ace of clubs had been shot through, the three of diamonds had gone to splint Monty’s broken finger, and the rest of the cards were so worn that they could only play poker if everyone hid their clearly marked cards.  Monty had tried to pass the time by singing, but then they’d all nearly died in an ambush because Monty sang loudly enough to cover the sounds of crouching Nazi troops, and Cap banned singing.  Dum Dum tried entertaining them with circus tricks, but after a few days of pulling flowers from his hat even Dugan admitted the endless marching was deadly dull.

Then they went through the abandoned farmhouse, and Jones found _The Story of Dr. Doolittle_ , only it was in French.  So Jackie read it aloud—quieter than Monty sang, and mostly in the evenings before dark fell and Sarge worried any light would give their position away—while Gabe translated for Dugan and Morita, and Monty occasionally decided to act out a scene.

He and Sarge had a long argument over which of them should be Chee-Chee, _le singe._  Barnes lost, mostly because he woke everyone up before dawn one morning with a gunshot ringing in their ears.

“What?  What?” Cap shouted, half-deaf and half-asleep to boot, shield up and fumbling his gun into his right hand.  “Where are they?”

“Come out, you lily-livered Krauts!” Dugan taunted, fishing a grenade out of his bowler and tossing the hat onto his head.  “You yellow bastards!”

Stop, Barnes signed, then waited for them to signal that they could hear.  “I killed it,” he muttered, staring at the ground, the pink on his face a mirror to the clouds in the lightening east.

“Killed who?” Jim yawned, scrubbing at his face with both hands.  “A scout?”

“No,” Cap disagreed, toeing at something on the ground a few yards away.  “Thumper.  Sgt. Barnes saved us from a rabbit.”

“It was _staring_ at me!” Sarge replied hotly, scowling at Rogers and pretending Jim’s yawn hadn’t turned into a hoarse laugh.  “All I could see were its eyes!”

Jackie joined Cap by the dead rabbit, shrugging one thin shoulder and glancing up at their squad leader.  “Petit déjeuner?” he wondered, and the others were hungry enough to assume that he was asking about food.

Steve shrugged, dragging his sergeant toward him with an arm around the neck, ignoring the elbow that dug into his waist.  “Why not?” he acquiesced.  “Might as well cook the Nazi rabbit, before his regiment wonders where he is.”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Barnes growled into Cap’s shoulder, and Cap laughed.

* * *

By the time they made it into the Swiss Alps, they had read _L’histoire de Doctor Doolittle_ at least three times, and Barnes had threatened to clock the next Commando who called him ‘Chee-Chee’.

It was Sarge, of course, who got charged by the ibex.

“What the hell is that?” Morita wondered, watching the animal’s ridged horns as it bowled James right over into the snow and knocked the rifle out of his hand.

“Billy goat gruff?” Monty guessed, aiming his sidearm at the goat.  He didn’t shoot, though, because Sarge had decided to _charge the billy goat_ , putting his head down and tackling the horned animal like he tackled Cap to the mats.

“Did zey teach you that, in your American army?” Jackie asked, standing next to Cap’s gun hand, the shield cocked on his other arm and ready to throw.

“No,” Rogers said, sounding proud and irritated all at once.  “They taught us that in Brooklyn.”  Then he leaned back, snapped “Bucky, get clear!” and tossed the shield in one smooth motion, trusting that his sergeant would follow orders better than the Commandos ever did.

“I told you, Stevie,” Barnes groaned from under several hundred pounds of goat, “they’re creating a woodland Nazi army.”

They traded the ibex with a farmer for a quicker meal, but they kept the horns.  One for Cap, who’d killed the Nazi goat, and one for Barnes, who Cap said was almost as hardheaded as a mountain goat.

Jim had held onto both horns, because he wasn’t doing an end run on Zola’s train.  Hadn’t tried to return them to Steve, after, because even saying James’ name would set Cap’s face in stone and tighten everyone’s throats.  He put them on the mantel, once he got home to Fresno and Maggie and the life Jim Morita had wanted before the war.

“What are those, daddy?” his daughter Jacqueline asked, thumb in her mouth and other chubby hand pointing at the ibex horns.

He scooped her up onto his hip, reaching out for the worn book propped up behind the horns.  “Let me tell you a story,” he said softly, kissing her temple and smiling when Maggie peered out at them from the kitchen, her hand resting on the swell of her belly.  “About Doctor Doolittle, and Chee-Chee, the bravest of the monkeys.”

He put Jackie to bed before he came back to the mantel, tapping his glass gently against each horn in a silent toast, because Jim didn’t know any words big enough to thank them for his life.  To thank them for the humanity—James’ shriek at a squirrel and Steve’s laughter with his sergeant’s fingers digging into his ribs—that they’d sacrificed to save Jim from war.


End file.
